If you’ve ever been involved in influencer social media marketing in any way, you probably know how long it could take to find the right people who would perfectly match your customer profile and have a high engagement rate. The pain is quite real when you need to quickly get the right group of people, ask them to try your product, and reward them for posting about it on social media.

This task looks like a good one for AI to solve, however, it doesn’t seem possible to have an algorithm provide the three main aspects of the task:

– accurate matchmaking of brands with social media users based on interests, content and engagement quality;

– avoiding low-quality engagements that can be related to fraud (like fake profiles) and/or bad behaviour (e.g. social media user pays to get low-quality engagements for the published post);

– performance results verification and reward distribution.

That’s why Lithuania-based startup Unboxed, which won the competition we hosted at the Crypto Capital World conference, has come with a way to involve humans while keeping the solution scalable.

Enter “blockchain oracles,” with whom, Unboxed promises, it’d take a brand no longer than 24 hours to find 1,000 perfectly matched social media influencers, or “unboxers.”

Simply speaking, Unboxed oracles are people who provide information to blockchain-based smart contracts about something that’s happening in the real world. Theoretically, the idea could be applied to a lot of different industries—but Unboxed has decided to start with influencer marketing.

“The group of completely random nodes participating in the blockchain are not allowed to know who the other participants in the oracle are,” said Ieva Mackeviciute, a marketing specialist at Unboxed. “This guaranteed anonymity ensures transparency and objectivity.

“It’s important to mention, that oracles are incentivised to be on the right side of the decision makers—it’s the only one way for them to be rewarded. If you’re part of the minority, you won’t receive a reward.”

As part of Unboxed Network, oracles will focus on three tasks when human involvement is crucial. First, they will check the accuracy of Unboxed AI-based algorithm that matches influencers to brands and choose the most relevant people. Second, oracles would validate the content that influencers post on their social media account and rate whether it matches the client’s brief. Third, the oracles would verify the results of the influencer’s posts and check for suspicious activity, like buying engagements.

When these three parts are done, token rewards will be assigned to both influencers and oracles. The network’s participants are paid for their contributions, and the amount is based on their success rate on previous campaigns and other measurable criteria.

“To simplify, businesses pay a fee in fiat which is converted to Unboxed tokens,” Mackeviciute said. “They are distributed to oracles, unboxers and their target audiences, as well as used towards providing premium services (e.g. to acquire higher ranking unboxers for a campaign).

“Inside the network, unboxers can use tokens to buy discounted brand products and companies—to acquire additional oracle and influencer services. This allows the creation of a closed token circulation in the network and will not only make the adoption of the Unboxed token easier but will create a lasting value for all members of the network.”

Currently, Unboxed has a working influencer marketing platform and plans to introduce an MVP of the oracles system by the end of 2018. The company is also gearing up towards an ICO to fuel its ambition on the $36 billion market of social media marketing.

In the photo: Augustinas Tarabilda, who works on Unboxed ICO as a business developer, presents the company at the Crypto Capital World pitch contest.